Long before the red ribbon became an innocuous symbol of AIDS
“awareness” and celebrity philanthropy, there was the pink triangle and
there was ACT UP and there were thousands of people taking to the
streets for their lives. Once a symbol used to mark suspected queers for
death in the Holocaust, ACT UP appropriated the pink triangle for
The Guggenheim Museum in New York City temporarily closed off its entrance on Saturday afternoon, November 11, after eight artists and cultural workers took to the institution’s iconic spiral ramp to denounce the Israeli military’s ongoing killing of Palestinian children in Gaza.
Installed on the occasion of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I want a president renders a poignant portrait of the cultural and political climate in the early 1990s in New York City with words that still resonate today.
DAMN. Kendrick Lamar opened the 2018 GRAMMYs with a powerful and political performance of his hit, "XXX.'" The rapper featured an army of face-covered soldiers marching in the background of an American flag, that quickly turned into a "satire" taking a jab at the current political climate in the United States.
David Opdyke’s wry, panoramic visions of an America perceptibly in the grips of climate crisis were born of an artistic crisis—of “needing to come up an idea by digging somewhere other than my own brain.” Having drawn on his imagination to conjure up the trenchant, ecologically-inflected critiques of American imperialism and late-stage capitalism that have defined his work for twenty years, he wondered what more he might, artistically speaking, say.
The Veterans Memorial in New York City, located at 55 Water Street, closes every day at 10pm. However, veterans often find themselves wanting to come to the memorial at all hours of the day and night. The organization Veterans for Peace organizes a sit-in every year on October 7th to protest their limited access to the memorial. That's not the only aim of the action, though.
For more than 20 years, Metronome, which includes a 62-foot-wide 15-digit electronic clock that faces Union Square in Manhattan, has been one of the city’s most prominent and baffling public art projects.
The Comfort Illusion is a solo aural performance that highlights the effects our everyday actions can have on the environment. Through mixed media storytelling using sound and lighting, Adams narrates the life of "The Overkiller" a fictional villian who negatively impacts the earth and the lives of the people around him through smaller everyday decisions. This character constantly prioritizes convenience over care and responsibility (ie.
At the press preview for Sharon Hayes’s new full-floor exhibition “There’s So Much I Want to Say to You” at the Whitney Museum there was a podium and a microphone set up in the center of the gallery that would eventually be used by director Adam Weinberg and curator Chrissie Iles to introduce the artist and her restless work.
Now that the dust has settled from the Met Gala, with all the excitement over Kylie Jenner’s bathroom selfie and Rihanna’s body-swallowing Comme des Garçons florals, it is worth pausing to consider a red carpet moment most people missed: the entrance of Joe Gebbia, co-founder and chief product officer of Airbnb, with Yeonmi Park, a North Korean refugee and international refugee activist.
"To discover
the seemingly endless variety of enthusiasms pursued by New
Yorkers, whether they were carried from immigrants' cultures
from overseas or indigenous to the city landscape.
These are real New Yorkers who have found fascinating ways to
We all learn art in school. Every kid loves to draw at some point. People get fascinated with the details of their new camera, or spend free time writing poems. But eventually, there’s a not a teacher telling you how great your are, or the camera gets put away, or you just plain get busy and stop. Years could go by before you start again, if you ever do at all.
The Improv Everywhere team created separate walking lanes for tourists and New Yorkers on a Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Department of Transportation “employees” were on hand to enforce the new rules and ask pedestrians for their feedback on the initiative. Enjoy the video first and then go behind-the-scenes with the photos and report below.
Catcalls of NYC is an organization that uses Instagram and everyday intervention as a platform of raising awareness about street sexual harassment. The group receives direct messages from people who have been catcalled on the street. The group goes to the location of the harassment and writes the catcall on the sidewalk in chalk. The Instagram account CatcallsofNYC then posts on their account a picture of the chalk writing.
Action as a response to viral video of Attorney Aaron Schlossberg's racist rant against Spanish speaking customers and employees at a midtown restaurant. The "Latin Party" included food, music, and dance celebrating Latina/o culture in the US.
From FB event page:
In 1991, Gonzalez-Torres lost his partner Ross to AIDS (the artist would face the same fate in 1996). In a tragic and highly personal tribute to Ross, Gonzalez-Torres took a picture of his still-indented empty bed - an image of universal intimacy and loss - and placed it on two dozen commercial billboard spaces throughout New York.
The initiators collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) of the Urban Justice Center to campaign against New York City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s 2010 law project. The bill, intended to revoke permits issued to street vendor trucks if they got parking tickets, was so restrictive that it threatened to put most food trucks out of business.
The Pilobolus Dance company, famous for their beautiful aesthetics of shadow play formed out of the dancer's bodies, started the #PilobolusVOTEproject, encouraging people to form the words VOTE with whatever material they had around them, take a picture of it and to upload it on instagram with the hashtag #PilobolusVOTEproject.
No matter how nuanced current superhero comics may be, to the general public they are still fairly simple. Superheroes are the good guys, supervillians are the bad guys, and it’s easy to see who is who. That’s why kids like to dress up as superheroes on Halloween — and why should they have all the fun?
by Natalie Pompilio
Natalie Jeremijenko wants you to feed the animals. She encourages you to text the fish—and makes sure they'll text you back. She turns moths into movie stars and believes the next big thing in urban transportation is human flight.
Two members of the Yes Lab brought a dozen thrift-store suits to Zuccotti Park and asked for volunteers. Then, within earshot of the police, the group made a human microphone announcement about a "highly risky, very arrestable" action. Then, together with a brand-new police escort, the group headed towards the Wall Street Bull chanting "Castrate the bull!" and other angry slogans. More police joined.
Sirens of the Lambs is created by the enigmatic street artist, Banksy. This piece was first spotted on the streets of New York City on October 10, 2013, it went viral on social media and people are posting and reposting about it. Sirens of the Lambs is a truck full of stuffed animals – plush cows, chickens, pigs, lambs, bears – that first appeared in the Meatpacking neighborhood of NYC.
Zimmerman a composer who uses art, dance, tech, and even robots in his shows. You might call this interdisciplinary. Wagner called it total art, or gesamtkunstwerk.
I love New York. When I was younger, the city was my playground. You could find me on any given weekend catching brunch with a friend at a café, going to an East Village restaurant for dinner, and then hopping the subway, headed to a nightclub in Chelsea. But at age 25, nine years ago, I was told I had multiple sclerosis, and I saw my freedoms slowly vanish.